Massive Pogroms 1918 Fake News Haller

Józef Haller Pamietniki, by Józef Haller.

Jozef Haller Refutes Jewish Accusations of Pogroms and Beard-Cutting By His Men. He is Beset By Confrontational Jewish Groups, and Gives Them a Sound Rebuff

MEMOIRS WITH A SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS is the title of this Polish-language book.

To this day, General Haller gets a bad rap from Jewish and Jewish-inspired authors. For instance, see ANTI-JEWISH VIOLENCE IN POLAND 1914-1920, by William W. Hagen. For this reason alone, Haller’s little-known memoir is relevant.

Far from being some kind of anti-minority demon that he is made out to be, General Haller had handled minority issues with great tact and forbearance. For instance, upon hearing news, related to the 1918-1919 Polish-Ukrainian War, that Ukrainians intended to slaughter Polish civilians [which became all too real during the later WWII OUN-UPA genocide of Poles], Haller repudiated calls for revenge. Instead, he said that “Revenge belongs to God”, and called for peaceful relations between Poles and Ukrainians. (p. 142).

JEWISH AGITATORS STIR UP HYSTERIA ABOUT “POLISH POGROMS”

While on combat duty, General Haller had been awakened by desperate mobs of Jews that had been stirred up, by agitators, about impending Polish pogroms. Haller calmed them down. (p. 33).

HYGIENIC NECESSITIES GET DISTORTED INTO ANTI-SEMITIC INCIDENTS

There was problem with hygiene in Haller’s Blue Army, and both the Polish Red Cross and the American YMCA got involved to solve the problem. So men were shaved for hygienic reasons. (p. 201). This became a manufactured anti-Semitic act for the American Jewish press. (p. 201). It was repeated in the Chelm region, where military sanitation had especially been a problem, even growing into an epidemic. The beards of men were cut only in severely-infected areas. (p. 247).
The Polonophobic tall tales grew with each retelling, and the canned accusations of (what else?) anti-Semitism eventually became bogus pogroms such as the one in Warsaw in January 1919. (p. 246).

BEARD-CUTTING ACCUSATIONS WERE SO FRIVOLOUS THAT THEY BECAME A TOTAL JOKE

Accusations of beard-cutting humiliations of Orthodox Jews, done by Haller’s men, were debunked by the elementary fact that they purportedly took place in locations where Haller’s Army was not even stationed! (p. 246).

Even so, Haller ordered that military police be placed on the trains between Warsaw and Lublin in order to prevent such alleged incidents. In one of them, a bearded Polish man handed the military policeman a pair of scissors, and jocularly requested a cutting of his beard. The whole train laughed. (p. 246).

INTRODUCTION TO THE DEMANDS OF THE SO-CALLED MINORITIES TREATY

All along, Poland’s Jews had enjoyed full religious, cultural, and political rights. The new demands were something else entirely–group rights for Jews.

Around 1918, there was a big international push for the newly-resurrected Polish state, via the so-called Minorities Treaty, to grant the Jews unprecedented special separate-nation rights. These demands included a quota of Jewish-designated seats in the Polish parliament, government-funded separatist-oriented Yiddish schools, a Jewish-only court system (secularized kahals) parallel to and independent of the Polish court system, etc. The media then (and history books today) raised a big stink when Poland refused to bow to these onerous demands.

No such separatist rights were presented, let alone demanded, by the Jews of London, Paris, or New York. This fact was brought up by separatist-opposing Polish Jews.

And–surprise–all this time, no such separatist rights were even imagined, let alone become the object of international fuss, regarding the Polish minority in Germany.

GENERAL HALLER IS CONFRONTED BY ANGRY AMERICAN JEWS DEMANDING ALL KINDS OF SPECIAL JEWISH RIGHTS IN POLAND

While in the USA, accusing Jews were all over Haller, and he told them off. He reminded them that, just as there was one class of citizen in the USA, so also there is but one class of citizen in Poland. (p. 309). When the complaint was raised that there are no special government-funded Jewish-only schools in Poland, Haller retorted by asking if Jews in America get such special government-funded schools. (p. 310). Rabbi Bernstein came away concluding that the Jewish demands were high-handed and unwarranted, and that the Poles were right. (p. 310).

Finally, the American Jews asked Haller what guarantees he was giving the Jews of Poland. He replied that their only guarantee comes from their loyalty to Poland and a joint Polish-Jewish fight against Germany. (p. 309).